In this occasional series based on places I have absolutely no desire work in let us leave the frozen wastes of Russia and instead revel in the frozen wastes of Canada and the wonderful town of Asbestos. For those who have noticed a pattern, well done.

This town has much in common with it’s Russian cousin; It is fanatically proud of itself (indeed once had it’s own Corvette the mighty HMCS Asbestos) and is stuffed full of people who will bore you to tears explaining why white Asbestos is safer than the brown or blue flavours (which may be true, I’m sure 300ºC fires are safer than 600 or 800ºC versions, but that’s hardly the point)

But there are differences. First the amusingly mis-guided advert campaign and second the quite spectacular hypocrisy of the government, because Asbestos is illegal to sell or use in Canada but perfectly legal to mine and export to foreign countries. At least the Russians actually use the Asbestos they mine, which may not be better for the locals but is at least less hypocritical.

To end on a cheap joke I commend you all to go to one of the fine restaurants in the town of Asbestos, starting with the Canteen of Asbestos.

The inevitable death of the hypocritical and tax-dodging Guardian drew a step closer as the parent group (which was itself set up to avoid death duties) announces another colossal loss.

If nothing else this is richly deserved on ground of hypocrisy. The Guardian has spent years using every rule in the book to avoid tax while at the same time bashing everyone else for ‘tax dodging’, including getting things so wrong over Tescos they had to issue a grovelling apology and were damned near sued out of existence.

If not paying loads of tax is as ‘morally offensive’ as the paper’s columnists claim then damn well stop using off-shore trusts. Indeed the ‘moral’ thing to do would be to pay the death duties the paper’s owners so successfully avoided all those years ago, sure the penalty interest on the bill is probably quite steep but this is about morality not crass commerce!

Still with such epic haemorrhages of cash, and this is before the ConDems put all public sector jobs online for free instead of exclusively into the Guardian, I doubt they could afford they have the cash to afford their high moral tone. Which makes their coming bankruptcy all the sweeter.